Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V2"

Charles Kingsley - "Prose Idylls"

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Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




'But where is the archbishop's house?'

'Close to the Serapeium. You cannot miss the place: four hundred
columns of marble, now ruined by Christian persecutors, stand on an
eminence--'

'But how far off?'

'About three miles; near the gate of the Moon.'

'Why, was not that the gate by which we entered the city on the
other side?'

'Exactly so; you will know your way back, having already traversed
it.'

Philammon checked a decidedly carnal inclination to seize the little
fellow by the throat, and knock his head against the wall, and
contented himself by saying--

'Then do you actually mean to say, you heathen villain, that you
have taken me six or seven miles out of my road?'

'Good words young man. If you do me harm, I call for help; we are
close to the Jews' quarter, and there are some thousands there who
will swarm out like wasps on the chance of beating a monk to death.
Yet that which I have done, I have done with a good purpose. First,
politically, or according to practical wisdom--in order that you,
not I, might carry the basket. Next, philosophically, or according
to the intuitions of the pure reason--in order that you might, by
beholding the magnificence of that great civilisation which your
fellows wish to destroy, learn that you are an ass, and a tortoise,
and a nonentity, and so beholding yourself to be nothing, may be
moved to become something.'

And he moved off.

Philammon seized him by the collar of his ragged tunic, and held him
in a gripe from which the little man, though he twisted like an eel
could not escape.

'Peaceably, if you will; if not, by main force. You shall go back
with me, and show me every step of the way. It is a just penalty.'

'The philosopher conquers circumstances by submitting to them. I go
peaceably. Indeed, the base necessities of the hog-bucket side of
existence compel me of themselves back to the Moon-gate, for another
early fruit job.'

So they went back together.

Now why Philammon's thoughts should have been running on the next
new specimen of womankind to whom he had been introduced, though
only in name, let psychologists tell, but certainly, after he had
walked some half-mile in silence, he suddenly woke up, as out of
many meditations, and asked--

'But who is this Hypatia, of whom you talk so much?'

'Who is Hypatia, rustic? The queen of Alexandria! In wit, Athene;
Hera in majesty; in beauty, Aphrodite!'

'And who are they?' asked Philammon.

The porter stopped, surveyed him slowly from foot to head with an
expression of boundless pity and contempt, and was in the act of
walking off in the ecstasy of his disdain, when he was brought to
suddenly by Philammon's strong arm.

'Ah!--I recollect. There is a compact .... Who is Athene? The
goddess, giver of wisdom. Hera, spouse of Zeus, queen of the
Celestials. Aphrodite, mother of love .... You are not expected to
understand.'

Philammon did understand, however, so much as this, that Hypatia was
a very unique and wonderful person in the mind of his little guide;
and therefore asked the only further question by which he could as
yet test any Alexandrian phenomenon--

'And is she a friend of the patriarch?'

The porter opened his eyes very wide, put his middle finger in a
careful and complicated fashion between his fore and third fingers,
and extending it playfully towards Philammon, performed therewith
certain mysterious signals, the effect whereof being totally lost on
him, the little man stopped, took another look at Philammon's
stately figure, and answered--

'Of the human race in general, my young friend. The philosopher
must rise above the individual, to the contemplation of the
universal .... Aha!-Here is something worth seeing, and the gates
are open.' And he stopped at the portal of a vast building.

'Is this the patriarch's house?'

'The patriarch's tastes are more plebeian. He lives, they say, in
two dirty little rooms--knowing what is fit for him. The
patriarch's house? Its antipodes, my young friend--that is, if such
beings have a cosmic existence, on which point Hypatia has her
doubts. This is the temple of art and beauty; the Delphic tripod of
poetic inspiration; the solace of the earthworn drudge; in a word,
the theatre; which your patriarch, if he could, would convert to-
morrow into a--but the philosopher must not revile. Ah! I see the
prefect's apparitors at the gate. He is making the polity, as we
call it here; the dispositions; settling, in short, the bill of fare
for the day, in compliance with the public palate. A facetious
pantomime dances here on this day every week--admired by some, the
Jews especially. To the more classic taste, many of his movements--
his recoil, especially--are wanting in the true antique severity--
might be called, perhaps, on the whole, indecent. Still the weary
pilgrim must be amused. Let us step in and hear.'

But before Philammon could refuse, an uproar arose within, a rush
outward of the mob, and inward of the prefect's apparitors.

'It is false!' shouted many voices. 'A Jewish calumny! The man is
innocent!'

'There is no more sedition in him than there is in me,' roared a fat
butcher, who looked as ready to fell a man as an ox. 'He was always
the first and the last to clap the holy patriarch at sermon.'

'Dear tender soul,' whimpered a woman; 'and I said to him only this
morning, why don't you flog my boys, Master Hierax? how can you
expect them to learn if they are not flogged? And he said, he never
could abide the sight of a rod, it made his back tingle so.'

'Which was plainly a prophecy!'

'And proves him innocent; for how could he prophesy if he was not
one of the holy ones?'

'Monks, to the rescue! Hierax, a Christian, is taken and tortured
in the theatre!' thundered a wild hermit, his beard and hair
streaming about his chest and shoulders.

'Nitria! Nitria! For God and the mother of God, monks of Nitria!
Down with the Jewish slanderers! Down with heathen tyrants!'--And
the mob, reinforced as if by magic by hundreds from without, swept
down the huge vaulted passage, carrying Philammon and the porter
with them.

'My friends,' quoth the little man, trying to look philosophically
calm, though he was fairly off his legs, and hanging between heaven
and earth on the elbows of the bystanders, 'whence this tumult?'

'The Jews got up a cry that Hierax wanted to raise a riot. Curse
them and their sabbath, they are always rioting on Saturdays about
this dancer of theirs, instead of working like honest Christians!'

'And rioting on Sunday instead. Ahem! sectarian differences, which
the philosopher--

The rest of the sentence disappeared with the speaker, as a sudden
opening of the mob let him drop, and buried him under innumerable
legs.

Philammon, furious at the notion of persecution, maddened by the
cries around him, found himself bursting fiercely through the crowd,
till he reached the front ranks, where tall gates of open ironwork
barred all farther progress, but left a full view of the tragedy
which was enacting within, where the poor innocent wretch, suspended
from a gibbet, writhed and shrieked at every stroke of the hide
whips of his tormentors.

In vain Philammon and the monks around him knocked and beat at the
gates; they were only answered by laughter and taunts from the
apparitors within, curses on the turbulent mob of Alexandria, with
its patriarch, clergy, saints, and churches, and promises to each
and all outside, that their turn would come next; while the piteous
screams grew fainter and more faint, and at last, with a convulsive
shudder, motion and suffering ceased for ever in the poor mangled
body.

'They have killed him! Martyred him! Back to the archbishop! To
the patriarch's house: he will avenge us!' And as the horrible
news, and the watchword which followed it, passed outwards through
the crowd, they wheeled round as one man, and poured through street
after street towards Cyril's house; while Philammon, beside himself
with horror, rage, and pity, hurried onward with them.

A tumultuous hour, or more, was passed in the street before he could
gain entrance; and then he was swept, along with the mob in which he
had been fast wedged, through a dark low passage, and landed
breathless in a quadrangle of mean and new buildings, overhung by
the four hundred stately columns of the ruined Serapeium. The grass
was already growing on the ruined capitals and architraves ....
Little did even its destroyers dream then, that the day would come
when one only of that four hundred would be left, as 'Pompey's
Pillar,' to show what the men of old could think and do.

Philammon at last escaped from the crowd, and putting the letter
which he had carried in his bosom into the hands of one of the
priests who was mixing with the mob, was beckoned by him into a
corridor, and up a flight of stairs, and into a large, low, mean
room, and there, by virtue of the world-wide freemasonry which
Christianity had, for the first time on earth, established, found
himself in five minutes awaiting the summons of the most powerful
man south of the Mediterranean.

A curtain hung across the door of the inner chamber, through which
Philammon could hear plainly the steps of some one walking up and
down hurriedly and fiercely.

'They will drive me to it!' at last burst out a deep sonorous voice.
'They will drive me to it .... Their blood be on their own head!
It is not enough for them to blaspheme God and His church, to have
the monopoly of all the cheating, fortune-telling, usury, sorcery,
and coining of the city, but they must deliver my clergy into the
hands of the tyrant?'

'It was so even in the apostles' time,' suggested a softer but far
more unpleasant voice.

'Then it shall be so no longer! God has given me the power to stop
them; and God do so to me, and more also, if I do not use that
power. To-morrow I sweep out this Augean stable of villainy, and
leave not a Jew to blaspheme and cheat in Alexandria.'

'I am afraid such a judgment, however righteous, might offend his
excellency.'

'His excellency! His tyranny! Why does Orestes truckle to these
circumcised, but because they lend money to him and to his
creatures? He would keep up a den of fiends in Alexandria if they
would do as much for him! And then to play them off against me and
mine, to bring religion into contempt by setting the mob together by
the ears, and to end with outrages like this! Seditious! Have they
not cause enough? The sooner I remove one of their temptations the
better: let the other tempter beware, lest his judgment be at hand!'

'The prefect, your holiness?' asked the other voice slily.

'Who spoke of the prefect? Whosoever is a tyrant, and a murderer,
and an oppressor of the poor, and a favourer of the philosophy which
despises and enslaves the poor, should not he perish, though he be
seven times a prefect?'

At this juncture Philammon, thinking perhaps that he had already
heard too much, notified his presence by some slight noise, at which
the secretary, as he seemed to be, hastily lifted the curtain, and
somewhat sharply demanded his business. The names of Pambo and
Arsenius, however, seemed to pacify him at once; and the trembling
youth was ushered into the presence of him who in reality, though
not in name, sat on the throne of the Pharaohs.

Not, indeed, in their outward pomp; the furniture of the chamber was
but a grade above that of the artisan's; the dress of the great man
was coarse and simple; if personal vanity peeped out anywhere, it
was in the careful arrangement of the bushy beard, and of the few
curling locks which the tonsure had spared. But the height and
majesty of his figure, the stern and massive beauty of his features,
the flashing eye, curling lip, and projecting brow--all marked him
as one born to command. As the youth entered, Cyril stopped short
in his walk, and looking him through and through, with a glance
which burnt upon his cheeks like fire, and made him all but wish the
kindly earth would open and hide him, took the letters, read them,
and then began--

'Philammon. A Greek. You are said to have learned to obey. If so
you have also learned to rule. Your father-abbot has transferred
you to my tutelage. You are now to obey me.'

'And I will.'

'Well said. Go to that window, then, and leap into the court.'

Philammon walked to it, and opened it. The pavement was fully
twenty feet below; but his business was to obey, and not take
measurements. There was a flower in the vase upon the sill. He
quietly removed it, and in an instant more would have leapt for life
or death, when Cyril's voice thundered 'Stop!'

'The lad will pass, my Peter. I shall not be afraid now for the
secrets which he may have overheard.'

Peter smiled assent, looking all the while as if he thought it a
great pity that the young man had not been allowed to put
talebearing out of his own power by breaking his neck.

'You wish to see the world. Perhaps you have seen something of it
to-day.'

'I saw the murder--'

'Then you saw what you came hither to see; what the world is, and
what justice and mercy it can deal out. You would not dislike to
see God's reprisals to man's tyranny? .... Or to be a fellow-worker
with God therein, if I judge rightly by your looks?'

'I would avenge that man.'

'Ah! my poor simple schoolmaster! And his fate is the portent of
portents to you now! Stay awhile, till you have gone with Ezekiel
into the inner chambers of the devil's temple, and you will see
worse things than these--women weeping for Thammuz; bemoaning the
decay of an idolatry which they themselves disbelieve--That, too, is
on the list of Hercules' labour, Peter mine.'

At this moment a deacon entered .... 'Your holiness, the rabbis of
the accursed nation are below, at your summons. We brought them in
through the back gate, for fear of--'

'Right, right. An accident to them might have ruined us. I shall
not forget you. Bring them up. Peter, take this youth, introduce
him to the parabolani .... Who will be the best man for him to work
under?'

'The brother Theopompus is especially sober and gentle.'

Cyril shook his head laughingly .... 'Go into the next room, my son
.... No, Peter, put him under some fiery saint, some true
Boanerges, who will talk him down, and work him to death, and show
him the best and worst of everything. Cleitophon will be the man.
Now then, let me see my engagements; five minutes for these Jews--
Orestes did not choose to frighten them: let us see whether Cyril
cannot; then an hour to look over the hospital accounts; an hour for
the schools; a half-hour for the reserved cases of distress; and
another half-hour for myself; and then divine service. See that the
boy is there. Do bring in every one in their turn, Peter mine. So
much time goes in hunting for this man and that man .... and life is
too short for all that. Where are these Jews?' and Cyril plunged
into the latter half of his day's work with that untiring energy,
self-sacrifice, and method, which commanded for him, in spite of all
suspicions of his violence, ambition, and intrigue, the loving awe
and implicit obedience of several hundred thousand human beings.

So Philammon went out with the parabolani, a sort of organised guild
of district visitors .... And in their company he saw that
afternoon the dark side of that world, whereof the harbour-panorama
had been the bright one. In squalid misery, filth, profligacy,
ignorance, ferocity, discontent, neglected in body, house, and soul,
by the civil authorities, proving their existence only in aimless
and sanguinary riots, there they starved and rotted, heap on heap,
the masses of the old Greek population, close to the great food-
exporting harbour of the world. Among these, fiercely perhaps, and
fanatically, but still among them and for them, laboured those
district visitors night and day. And so Philammon toiled away with
them, carrying food and clothing, helping sick to the hospital, and
dead to the burial; cleaning out the infected houses--for the fever
was all but perennial in those quarters--and comforting the dying
with the good news of forgiveness from above; till the larger number
had to return to evening service. He, however, was kept by his
superior, watching at a sick-bedside, and it was late at night
before he got home, and was reported to Peter the Reader as having
acquitted himself like 'a man of God,' as, indeed, without the least
thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrificing, he had truly
done, being a monk. And so he threw himself on a truckle-bed, in
one of the many cells which opened off a long corridor, and fell
fast asleep in a minute.

He was just weltering about in a dreary dream-jumble of Goths
dancing with district visitors, Pelagia as an angel, with peacock's
wings; Hypatia with horns and cloven feet, riding three hippopotami
at once round the theatre; Cyril standing at an open window, cursing
frightfully, and pelting him with flower-pots; and a similar self-
sown after-crop of his day's impressions; when he was awakened by
the tramp of hurried feet in the street outside, and shouts, which
gradually, as he became conscious, shaped themselves into cries of
'Alexander's Church is on fire! Help, good Christians! Fire!
Help!'

Whereat he sat up in his truckle-bed, tried to recollect where he
was, and having with some trouble succeeded, threw on his sheepskin,
and jumped up to ask the news from the deacons and monks who were
hurrying along the corridor outside .... 'Yes, Alexander's church
was on fire;' and down the stairs they poured, across the courtyard,
and out into the street, Peter's tall figure serving as a standard
and a rallying point.

As they rushed out through the gateway, Philammon, dazzled by the
sudden transition from the darkness within to the blaze of moon and
starlight which flooded the street, and walls, and shining roofs,
hung back a moment. That hesitation probably saved his life; for in
an instant he saw a dark figure spring out of the shadow, a long
knife flashed across his eyes, and a priest next to him sank upon
the pavement with a groan, while the assassin dashed off down the
street, hotly pursued by monks and parabolani.

Philammon, who ran like a desert ostrich, had soon outstripped all
but Peter, when several more dark figures sprang out of doorways and
corners and joined, or seem to join, the pursuit. Suddenly,
however, after running a hundred yards, they drew up opposite the
mouth of a side street; the assassin stopped also. Peter,
suspecting something wrong, slackened his pace, and caught
Philammon's arm.

'Do you see those fellows in the shadow?'

But, before Philammon could answer, some thirty or forty men, their
daggers gleaming in the moonlight, moved out into the middle of the
street, and received the fugitives into their ranks. What was the
meaning of it? Here was a pleasant taste of the ways of the most
Christian and civilised city of the Empire!

'Well,' thought Philammon, 'I have come out to see the world, and I
seem, at this rate, to be likely to see enough of it.'

Peter turned at once, and fled as quickly as he had pursued; while
Philammon, considering discretion the better part of valour,
followed, and they rejoined their party breathless.

'There is an armed mob at the end of the street.'

'Assassins!' 'Jews!' 'A conspiracy!' Up rose a Babel of doubtful
voices. The foe appeared in sight, advancing stealthily, and the
whole party took to flight, led once more by Peter, who seemed
determined to make free use, in behalf of his own safety, of the
long legs which nature had given him.

Philammon followed, sulkily and unwillingly, at a foot's pace; but
he had not gone a dozen yards when a pitiable voice at his feet
called to him--

'Help! mercy! Do not leave me here to be murdered! I am a
Christian; indeed I am a Christian!'

Philammon stooped, and lifted from the ground a comely negro-woman,
weeping, and shivering in a few tattered remnants of clothing.

'I ran out when they said the church was on fire,' sobbed the poor
creature, 'and the Jews beat and wounded me. They tore my shawl and
tunic off me before I could get away from them; and then our own
people ran over me and trod me down. And now my husband will beat
me, if I ever get home. Quick! up this side street, or we shall be
murdered!'

The armed men, whosoever they were, were close on them. There was
no time to be lost; and Philammon, assuring her that he would not
desert her, hurried her up the side street which she pointed out.
But the pursuers had caught sight of them, and while the mass held
on up the main sight, three or four turned aside and gave chase.
The poor negress could only limp along, and Philammon, unarmed,
looked back, and saw the bright steel points gleaming in the
moonlight, and made up his mind to die as a monk should.
Nevertheless, youth is hopeful. One chance for life. He thrust the
negress into a dark doorway, where her colour hid her well enough,
and had just time to ensconce himself behind a pillar, when the
foremost pursuer reached him. He held his breath in fearful
suspense. Should he be seen? He would not die without a struggle
at least. No! the fellow ran on, panting. But in a minute more,
another came up, saw him suddenly, and sprang aside startled. That
start saved Philammon. Quick as a cat, he leapt upon him, felled
him to the earth with a single blow, tore the dagger from his hand,
and sprang to his feet again just in time to strike his new weapon
full into the third pursuer's face. The man put his hand to his
head, and recoiled against a fellow-ruffian, who was close on his
heels. Philammon, flushed with victory, took advantage of the
confusion, and before the worthy pair could recover, dealt them half
a dozen blows which, luckily for them, came from an unpractised
hand, or the young monk might have had more than one life to answer
for. As it was, they turned and limped off, cursing in an unknown
tongue; and Philammon found himself triumphant and alone, with the
trembling negress and the prostrate ruffian, who, stunned by the
blow and the fall, lay groaning on the pavement.

It was all over in a minute .... The negress was kneeling under the
gateway, pouring out her simple thanks to Heaven for this unexpected
deliverance; and Philammon was about to kneel too, when a thought
struck him; and coolly despoiling the Jew of his shawl and sash, he
handed them over to the poor negress, considering them fairly enough
as his own by right of conquest; but, lo and behold! as she was
overwhelming him with thanks, a fresh mob poured into the street
from the upper end, and were close on them before they were aware
.... A flush of terror and despair, .... and then a burst of joy,
as, by mingled moonlight and torchlight, Philammon descried priestly
robes, and in the forefront of the battle--there being no apparent
danger--Peter the Reader, who seemed to be anxious to prevent
inquiry, by beginning to talk as fast as possible.

'Ah, boy! Safe? The saints be praised! We gave you up for dead!
Whom have you here? A prisoner? And we have another. He ran right
into our arms up the street, and the Lord delivered him into our
hand. He must have passed you.'

'So he did,' said Philammon, dragging up his captive, 'and here is
his fellow-scoundrel.' Whereon the two worthies were speedily tied
together by the elbows; and the party marched on once more in search
of Alexander's church, and the supposed conflagration.

Philammon looked round for the negress, but she had vanished. He
was far too much ashamed of being known to have been alone with a
woman to say anything about her. Yet he longed to see her again; an
interest--even something like an affection--had already sprung up in
his heart toward the poor simple creature whom he had delivered from
death. Instead of thinking her ungrateful for not staying to tell
what he had done for her, he was thankful to her for having saved
his blushes, by disappearing so opportunely .... And he longed to
tell her so--to know if she was hurt--to--Oh, Philammon! only four
days from the Laura, and a whole regiment of women acquaintances
already! True, Providence having sent into the world about as many
women as men, it maybe difficult to keep out of their way
altogether. Perhaps, too, Providence may have intended them to be
of some use to that other sex, with whom it has so mixed them up.
Don't argue, poor Philammon; Alexander's church is on fire!-forward!

And so they hurried on, a confused mass of monks and populace, with
their hapless prisoners in the centre, who, hauled, cuffed,
questioned, and cursed by twenty self-elected inquisitors at once,
thought fit, either from Jewish obstinacy or sheer bewilderment, to
give no account whatsoever of themselves.

As they turned the corner of a street, the folding-doors of a large
gateway rolled open; a long line of glittering figures poured across
the road, dropped their spear-butts on the pavement with a single
rattle, and remained motionless. The front rank of the mob
recoiled; and an awe-struck whisper ran through them .... 'The
Stationaries!'